Brussels, 15/04/2015 (Agence Europe) - Nearly 400 migrants are believed to have died on Sunday 12 April in a shipwreck in the Mediterranean, according to reports by survivors rescued on Tuesday 14 April in southern Italy, states the NGO Save the Children and the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), AFP reports.
In the last few days, the Italian coastguard service has come to the assistance of 42 vessels packed with more than 6,500 migrants and announced on Monday 13 April that it had rescued 144 people and recovered nine bodies following the shipwreck of one of these vessels. Representatives of Save the Children and the IOM have started to interview the survivors, who have told them that there were between 500 and 550 people on board the boat in total, including many young people.
“Our investigations are still underway to understand the dynamics of the shipwreck”, IOM spokesperson Flavio Di Giacomo explained, adding that early indications are that the boat capsised under the effect of the movement of the passengers when they saw their rescuers.
If confirmed, which is not yet the case as far as Frontex and the Italian authorities are concerned - according to the cautious reaction of the spokesperson to the European Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos, on Wednesday morning - this latest tragedy would be even worse than the one which took place off Lampedusa in October 2013, when 366 migrants perished and which led to the launch of the Italian Mare Nostrum operation between the Italian coast and Libya. It would also bring to more than 900 the number of deaths in the Mediterranean confirmed by the IOM since the start of this year, compared to 47 during the same period in 2014.
The Greens/EFA group at the EP have issued a press release in which they deplore this latest tragedy. “The European governments are perfectly aware of what they need to do, but most of them are happy to pass the buck”, said the Franco-Norwegian MEP, Eva Joly. “By refusing to deal with the reality of the situation, they are responsible for all of these deaths in the Mediterranean. We need coordinated sea rescue paid for by all the member states. We cannot abandon the Mediterranean countries such as Italy, Greece and Spain and leave them to act alone”, said the MEP, who went on to call on the member states to develop legal channels for entry into the EU.
At a hearing at the EP on Tuesday 14 April, the MEPs of the committee on civil liberties, and in particular the co-rapporteurs on the future global approach to migration of the European Commission, Kashetu Kyenge (Italy, S&D) and Roberta Metsola (Malta, EPP), also argued for the responsibilities to be shared between the Twenty-Eight, with the Italian MEP calling on all member states to take part in rescue operations in the Mediterranean and to reinforce the sea rescue activities of the agency Frontex.
At the same hearing, the former Maltese Prime Minister, Lawrence Gonzi, also stressed the duty of all member states to take ownership of this problem, describing it as “shameful” that the Mediterranean is becoming a “graveyard”. The former Prime Minister referred to options, in addition to reinforcing the technical resources of Frontex, such as redeploying missions such as Eunavfor, which fights piracy off the coast of Somalia, to the Mediterranean, or CSDP missions of the same kind. (Solenn Paulic)